Author: Sean

The great fallacy of New York’s glorified “Bad Old Days” is the idea that everyone involved in that legendary artistic renaissance devoted every waking moment to it’s enrichment. Yes, many of the artists were living hand to mouth, but the fans, friends and general “scene” around those various movements were usually working folk who just tapped into a moment. The man waving his hands in the air at the command of DJ Kool Herc might have worked as a repair man, the young woman losing herself in the club experiments at The Paradise Garage could have been a telephone operator. While it’s true that Manhattan was unfathomably cheaper and grittier than today’s sanitized playground, the idea that the whole island was some kind of anarchist collective does a disservice to the men and women who found time during their working week to support their favorite artists. Continue...

It may be too early to start forming definitive opinions yet, but I believe the mid-00’s will be remembered as the greatest era of “Indie Rock”. Much the same way that time has revealed the early to mid 90’s as the true golden age of hip-hop, the mid 00’s gave us an almost embarrassing abundance of great Indie Rock. From The Shins to Sufjan Stevens to TV On The Radio, there were many great musicians working at their peak during that 4-5 year stretch. That period was so flooded with great Indie that many excellent artists and albums simply fell through the cracks, their releases lost in the sea of great music. The Futureheads are one of those bands. Continue...

“I can’t believe I got Carnegie Hall to chant ‘what do I gotta do to get that dick in my mouth’ as I walked out!” Exclaims Patton Oswalt as he takes the stage, referring to MC Bridget Everett’s introduction. While the venue may be mostly known for the high culture of symphonies and operas, it has a rich history of spoken word. And while a man known for his epic takedown of The KFC Famous Bowl may seem like an odd name to put next to Albert Einstein or Ernest Hemmingway, Patton Oswalt has more than earned his right to perform his brilliant stand up material here. Continue...

I’ve said it many times before, but 2014 wasn’t a great year for music. A few big name artists had high profile flops; Coldplay released an album, or so I’m told, and people were more concerned with getting that U2 album OFF their hard drives then actually listening to it. Other established critical favorites like Spoon and Thom York, were content to tread water, ultimately just repackaging old ideas. Still, while 2014 lacked the seismic releases we’ve been privileged with in the past few years, it did have it’s big bright spots. Here are my 10 favorite albums of 2014. Continue...

1999 was an awful year for music. Obviously it had it’s hidden gems (Dismemberment Plan, Beck, and Beta Band come immediately to mind), but by and large that year was a barren wasteland. Grunge and Alternative, the twin headed beast that had driven Rock to dizzying heights in the first half of the decade, had largely run their course. Nu Metal kept the angst of grunge while ditching the maturity, and Lou Pearlman’s Bubblegum machine scrubbed MTV of the ironic edge that had defined it’s early 90’s embrace of Alternative Nation. Continue...

So far this decade, R&B has been experiencing a golden age. From Miguel and Frank Ocean to How To Dress Well and James Blake, boundary pushing R&B has experienced a critical and commercial renaissance in the past few years. Meanwhile, acting as a tide to rise all boats, Adele’s 21 has been an unstoppable sales juggernaut. Tapping into an unknown appetite for traditional folk R&B, 21 rode several monster singles to become the only 10 million seller of this decade. Continue...

If you were a moderately successful Indie Rock band in 2004, the future must have looked pretty damn bright. The explosive popularity of the first season of The OC had introduced the genre to a new generation of suburban kids. This, coupled with the commercial success of Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism was good enough, but when Garden State (and that film’s accompanying soundtrack) became a cultural phenomenon, it seemed like Indie Rock might actually be shifting the musical landscape in the same way Grunge had over a decade earlier. Continue...

As Labor day passes us by, I think we can all agree that 2014 has been a pretty underwhelming year for music thus far. There have been some bright spots, but there haven’t been many true triumphs. Even the biggest selling albums of the year, Beyonce and the Frozen soundtrack, had the good sense to be released in 2013. While a tepid music year is always a bummer, 2014 has been counterbalanced by one of the best summer blockbuster seasons in a while. While it’s tough to judge the merits of a time traveling comic book plot against the story of a Polish immigrant in 1921, here is how I felt the movies I saw this summer ranked against each other*, with the caveat that I considered all of them to be some measure of a success. Continue...

It’s been said many times before, but Rock n Roll fans have always taken Spoon for granted. While more sensational acts like Arcade Fire and Radiohead pushed the boundaries of the genre throughout the 00’s, Spoon consistently refined their unique blend of Indie Blues Rock. From 2001’s Girls Can Tell through 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Spoon released four near perfect albums in a row. All of this is a long winded way of saying They Want My Soul is merely good, and with this band good registers as a disappointment. While many found 2010’s Transference boring and featherweight, I thought it was an intentional effort to strip down their sound from the bloated but brilliant Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. Unfortunately, on They Want My Soul, Spoon seems to be trying to recapture the kinetic insomnia of Girls Can Tell, and finding mixed results. Opener Rent I Pay [...] Continue...

1. Kanye West – “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”: As fractured as our current culture is, it is nearly impossible to be as universally known as Kanye West is, to the point where a good dose of the disdain people have for him is based on his omnipresence. Whatever one thinks of Kanye the man, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an undisputed masterpiece. Garnering near universal consensus as the best record of 2010, Dark Fantasy is thrilling, clever, and impossible to pin down to one genre. It may ultimately stand as the greatest record of our current decade. Continue...